More than half of employees believe it’s their employer’s responsibility to help them plan for retirement

9th September 2016

More than half of employees believe their employer has responsibility to help them plan for retirement. Nearly three quarters of employees would welcome their employer allowing 15 minutes each month to check their workplace pension during work hours.

Research by pension firm Aegon highlights that employers aren’t encouraging employees to check their workplace pensions during work hours, despite it being one of the most valuable workplace benefits.

Some 54% employees believe that it is their employer’s responsibility to help them plan for retirement but 75% said that they are not being actively encouraged by their employer to check their workplace pension during working hours.

A further 21% of employees said they are not allowed to check their workplace pension during working hours.

But if their employer were to encourage them to check their workplace pension during work hours, 86% of employees said that they would.

The research also found that 73% of employees would welcome the introduction by their employer of regular time each month to check their workplace pension and most employees (71%) thought that 15 minutes a month would be a reasonable amount of time to check your workplace pension during work hours. However, when asked how often they thought they needed to check their pension, many (40%) said quarterly would be sufficient.

Aegon believes more employers should be encouraging employees to engage with their pensions in the workplace, partly so that workers have greater appreciation of this valuable benefit from their employer.

In addition, the research found that if given the time each month to check their pension, employees are most likely to:

check their fund value

check their contributions have been paid and are correct

use ‘what if’ tools, for example to understand the impact of increasing contributions

Kate Smith, Head of Pensions at Aegon said: “Employers have invested significant time and effort in establishing their workplace schemes and are key to helping employees develop good pension saving habits. By setting aside regular time to check their pension, staff are more likely to see the value of these important benefits provided by their employer and will start to think about saving and financial preparations for retirement.

“Our own experience in the workplace has shown a 30% increase in employee engagement levels when the employer has endorsed the pension and encouraged employees to take action. This demonstrates how a small change from an employer can make a big difference to engagement levels in the workplace.”

The research was carried out among members of Aegon UK’s consumer and customer panels between 24 and 30 August 2016 with a sample size of 386.